Having worked in UK academic libraries for 15 years before becoming freelance, I saw the rise and rise of citation counting (although as Geoffrey Bilder points out, it should rightly be called reference counting). Such counting, I learnt, was called “bibliometrics”. The very name sounds like something that librarians should be interested in if not expert at, and so I delved into what they were and how they might help me and also the users of academic libraries. It began with the need to select which journals to subscribe to, and it became a filter for readers to select which papers to read. Somewhere along the road, it became a measurement of individual researchers, and a component of university rankings: such metrics were gaining attention.

Then along came altmetrics, offering tantalising glimpses of something more than the numbers: real stories of impact that could be found through online tracking. Context…

See also the updated version that can be used not only for Librarians! “On Sept. 1, 2016, we updated this page to add a customizable version of the Quick Reference Cards for Research Impact Metrics poster. This version is designed for libraries to use for promotion of their research services around metrics and includes blank space in the footer to add the library logo and contact information.

In addition, there is now a PowerPoint deck with one metrics card per slide for use in training.”